John Jefferson
Inset: Lyndell Demps (Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office). Surveillance video shows the branch cutter attack in a home in Florida (Orlando Police Department via WOFL).
A Florida man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for attacking a family in their home with branch cutters seven months after he was released from prison, where he served more than two decades for an attempted carjacking.
Lyndell Demps, 52, learned his fate on Monday after being found guilty of home invasion robbery and assault and battery with a deadly weapon, prosecutors said in a news release.
According to an arrest affidavit, the incident happened on June 15, 2023, when Demps surreptitiously entered the rear patio of an Orlando residence and repeatedly attacked the homeowner with a long-handled branch cutter, the document said.
Demps then went into the home through a sliding glass door that he shattered in the attack and demanded money from the victim, his wife and mother-in-law while holding the gardening tool over his head and swinging it downward, court documents said. The attack was caught on the home’s surveillance camera.
At one point, when one of the victims tried to call 911, Demps took the cellphone. He held the branch cutters over his head and walked toward the victims, cornering them in the living room, the affidavit said.
When one of the victims tried to go into her bedroom and close the door, Demps hit the door with the branch cutters, preventing the door from shutting. The attack ended at one point when Demps went into a room and retrieved a jar of coins, leaving the victims free to run out of the home and scream for help, the document said.
Demps fled out of the house through the patio with the victims’ cellphones, which he dumped nearby, and the jar of coins, the affidavit said.
The homeowner was treated at a hospital for fractures to his skull and orbital socket and cuts to his left hand, which required surgery. He also lost a tooth, the affidavit said.
Demps was arrested later that night after he broke into a day care, prosecutors said. He told law enforcement from jail that he was high on drugs and needed money, prosecutors said in May when they announced his conviction. Demps told cops he needed money because he was homeless, the affidavit said. He also wrote a letter to the victim apologizing for “any pain or stress that I may have caused to you and your family,” the affidavit said.
Prosecutors said Demps has an extensive criminal history. He had been released from prison seven months before the branch cutter attack after having served nearly 26 years for an attempted carjacking in 1996. He is categorized as a habitual felony offender, a habitual violent felony offender and a prison release re-offender, prosecutors said.
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